I’m Busted!
Did that song come out of Dyess, Arkansas?
Q
Have you played Tennessee Flat Top Box yet?
In the summer of 1966 I had my first apartment in a complex on the border of a nowhere place next to Nashville. It was the pits, but I didn’t know it.
There was a man there who used to walk around the complex and across the field a lot. He walked all the time and was always by himself. Everybody knew him and knew he was down. We whispered his name when he went by and he never looked our way. It was Johnny.
I’ve asked myself a hundred times why I never stopped to talk or wave or any of the things that we Southerners usually do. I think it was because I was shy myself and I had never known anyone who had gotten into trouble with drugs or with the law. I was young and didn’t know that someone so well-known could be isolated without wanting to be.
But he pulled himself up and away from all of that, married a couple of years later and had a TV show within four years. I don’t think he ever forgot what it was like to be that far down. That’s why here in Nashville he is remembered for a treasure beyond even the gift of his music – and that is for the gift of the goodness of his heart. There was not a more generous person in this town.
I am so going to miss knowing he’s nearby.
Down There By The Train. if you please, Mr Modem.
Zoe, I was moved by your post. Thanks.
You’ve gotta include…
Ghost Riders In The Sky
The Highwayman
Oh What A Dream!
One Piece At A Time
Fulsom Prison Blues
And end the evening with his versions (from the recent album) of:
Danny Boy
Bridge Over Troubled Water
and
We’ll Meet Again, which absolutely has to be the last song of the evening.
Tennesee Flat Top Box has played, as have Ghost Riders and the others mentioned!
Down There By the Train for my very good friend The Loaded Dog, and I finished the night with We’ll Meet Again. I cried my eyes out, thank you very much. But it was a good cry and I thank you. It was going to be the last song anyway.
Kilt’: What a wonderful album he left us with, yes?
Zoe? Can you write a little more about those years?
Thank y’all so much for contributing to my thread! I appreciate it more than I can say.
The Man In Black. May he never be forgotten.
Thanks
Quasimodem
Oh yeah! Forgot to state that “… I don’t care if I do die, do die do die, do!”
From The Orange Blossom Special!
And I ain’t worried about gettin’ my nourishment in New York!
Y’all just gotta Understand Your Man!
Just sayin’!
Q
Yeah, American IV: The Man Comes Around. I got scared the first time I listened to it, because it sounded so much like he was saying goodbye.
I got scared too, but I think it was because of that apocalyptic title track and who it was singing it. I mean, Johnny Cash telling you you’d better straighten up is a very important message, after all!
Q
Probably a bit late but 'Let The Train Blow The Whistle’ is a great way to finish a Johnny Cash night 
Tennessee Flat Top Box.
A classic too often overlooked.